


Patterns

by OUATgirl



Series: Moriarty and his tiger [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-10
Updated: 2019-10-10
Packaged: 2020-12-07 18:28:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20980412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OUATgirl/pseuds/OUATgirl
Summary: Sebastian has patterns (small drabble for wordtober on Tumblr, kind of inspired me to make a new series)





	Patterns

**Author's Note:**

> So, I made this for wordtober on Tumblr but now I feel like doing a bunch of little fics and put them up here  
I hope you enjoy

It always starts the same way. He gets the file, and he gets to work.

  
Sebastian has a ritual. He always cases the place for a few days before finding a nice rooftop. He gets a pack of cigarettes, the kind he only gets on a job, he goes up the stairs (he once got stuck on an elevator and almost missed his mark) and takes out the rifle.

  
There's a moment then, a time where he takes a deep breath, lights a cigarette, and he's back in a deep jungle, slivers of light through the leaves reflecting off the barrel of his gun. He opens his eyes. Takes a drag of his cigarette, and lies stomach down on the rooftop. His heart slows down, after all these years he learned to make it.

** Bang**

  
Barely audible, tremendously effective. The man in the penthouse across the street is dead before he hits the expensive carpet.

  
He texts James. 

  
**"Done, send the cleaner."**  
He always gets a **"say please, Sebby."** or **"manners, tiger."** but he never leaves until the clean up crew is entering the house.  
Then there's the after party.  
He usually doesn't say a word. He gets home to find his boss on his office, sitting in that damn leather chair in a far too nice suit to just walk around the house, yelling at someone on the phone and waving a gun around.

  
So Sebastian waits. And when James puts down the phone and the gun, he sets the casing in front of him and leans on the desk. James smiles. He has a lot of different smiles, this one is reserved for a job well done or a particularly devious idea. Still, he only smiles. In silence he removes a bottle of single malt from the bottom drawer and two glasses. Only then do they start to talk. Usually around the second glass, Seb tells his boss how he did it, and James tells him the next step. And then they move away from work. Seb's sentences begin with "Jim" instead of "boss", and there's a shift in the air.

One time, after they managed to finish the bottle, he told Jim about his ritual.  
"but why, tiger?" he'd dragged the question, drunkenly slurring the r's "that's a pattern. The kind of thing that gets you caught."  
He hadn't answered him then. And Jim hadn't asked again ever since. For all the things they shared, Seb wasn't sure if Jim would get it. The brand of cigarettes was sold in three shops that he knew of, all across Brittain. One of his old army buddies had a pack on him at all times, and that's when Seb had started to smoke. They said it helped steady the nerves. To this day, Seb doesn't get a job done without those cigarettes. Jim refuses to kiss him after he smoked them. That's also why Seb keeps mints in his rifle case. Every pattern needs a little update every now and then.


End file.
